Challenges

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Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Moving from bustling New Orleans to tranquil Fortune’s Bay?Done. Opening a home restoration business?In the bag. Anything that keeps him from picturing his beautiful assistant rumpled in his bed.Daisy Mae has two goals: make her impenetrable boss crack a smile and hope to heck he doesn’t discover her online blog, Love Letters Unrestricted.When Reese stumbles across a draft of Daisy’s latest letter, he suddenly realizes she's been keeping her feelings for him under wraps--complete and undeniable loathing.Only, all’s fair in love and war, and Reese is determined to change her mind. In the end, unrequited love just might be . . . requited.

EXCERPT

“Everyone color coordinates socks, Reese.” Daisy drew out a long pause, then cut him a side glance. “Those who don’t are heathens, anyway.”That made him chuckle, and it was a test of strength that Daisy’s spine didn’t snap straight with awareness.“Want to take a poll?” he asked. Without giving her the chance to respond, he pointed his water bottle at his cousin’s wife. “Matching socks? Yay or nay?”Wide-eyed—no doubt because Daisy and Reese could be terrifying to outsiders once they got going—Lizzie peered under the table to check out her feet. A moment later, she faked a white-flag surrender with a wave of her hand. “I’m a heathen.”Crap.“Gage?” Reese asked, tilting the bottle so that it pointed at his cousin. “Socks or no socks?”To their surprise, Gage lifted one leg past the booth and showed off his bare leg. His khaki shorts stopped just above his knee, and on his feet he wore a pair of leather flip flops. “Heathen,” he murmured, “straight down to my core.”Double crap.She lifted her gaze to Reese’s face. “And you?”Smoothly, he slid from the booth and rose to his feet. His hands stayed locked onto his hips until she got the impression that he wanted her full attention—Reese rarely, if ever, made demands outside of the office.The moment drew out, waiting, waiting, waiting, until Daisy finally scooted a foot to the right, curled her hands around the edge of the booth, and leaned over to get a gander at his shiny leather shoes.Another pause.And yet another.And then he pulled up his slacks just far enough so that she could see his socks.His matching socks—both were a bland gray.It took every inch of strength to keep from throwing a fist in the air. “I knew it!” She pointed at his feet. “Matching, of course. I would seriously expect nothing less from a man who drinks his coffee with—wait, what are you doing?” Wide-eyed, she watched as he slowly, dramatically, toed off one shoe and then kicked off the other. “Reese?”He wriggled his toes in his socks.Socks, which had mismatching colored stripes across the toes.Blue on one. Green on the other.Daisy’s eyes darted up to his face, and . . . oh wow. Wow. In the three years that she’d worked for him, she had never—not once—seem him wear such a smile. It was wide and it was full and it made him look so many kinds of sexy.Sinfully handsome, her brain offered up, he looks sinfully handsome.It took her a moment to hear the words crossing his lips, and then another moment to actually digest them: “You don’t know everything about me, Daisy. Not yet, anyway.”That was a challenge if she’d ever heard one, and Daisy couldn’t help it—she was intrigued . . . even if she was on a sabbatical from men.

PURCHASE LINKS

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AUTHOR BIO

Maria Luis is the author of sexy contemporary romances, though she may or may not have a few historical romances hiding in the cobwebs of her computer.When she’s not writing about strong men and the sassy women who sweep them off their feet, Maria is a historian who specializes in medieval England and 19th century New Orleans. What do the two eras have in common, you ask? Not much, except for disease, scandalous activities and crime—Maria’s favorite topics. Maria lives in New Orleans with her better half, where she can generally be found hiking with her two dogs, Zeus and Athena, kayaking in Louisiana’s inter-coastal waterways, or curled up on the couch with a good book.